recovered, I hope
After my last post I fell into a particularly nasty downward spiral. I actually felt like my entire being was rolling around and around in a giant funnel, spinning faster and faster the longer it went on. I never quite pulled out of that, but something just as bad happened to me right after that.
I guess my fatigue is dangerous.
The night of the 18th, I'd gone over to my nephew's girlfriend's house to take pictures of the kids before the big formal dance. Then I went to my Dad's house for a little while, because he was laid up with a broken leg.
By the time I left, my joints had started aching. My brother says that it was because I was sitting in the floor and I just got sore.
Well, by the time I had been home for an hour, chills hit me and I was shivering so much that my teeth were chattering. I couldn't pile enough blankets on the bed and I was miserable when the aches hit.
Then came the fever. For three days. My sister called me to see how I was, and I spoke before I thought... I said, "I could kill for some ginger ale..." She was on her way home after picking up medicines for her sick elder son, but she told me she didn't have any money to buy it with, she was tired after working for 9 hours and the drive. So I told her it was okay, I had diet soda and water in the fridge. I hadn't actually eaten anything since that Saturday, and by this time it was Tuesday. I still wasn't hungry, but to tell the truth, I couldn't stand up long enough to cook for myself, and I didn't have anything easily cookable. A couple of hours later she called me to say she was getting some Theraflu for her son and would generic ginger ale be okay?
(No comment on the "I don't have any money for a 79 cent bottle of ginger ale, but I'm going to head back out to buy Theraflu anyway.")
And then came the headache that not even my strongest medication would stop. (And ice didn't help either.) Instead of being a typical migraine that hurt horribly on one side of my head whenever I leaned over or stood up, this one seemed to be centered dead between the two hemispheres of my brain. No amount of ice could quite get that far into my head. It hurt for three days straight, and I spent about two days of it screaming in my bed because I couldn't even sleep and lying down hurt more than anything else. On day three my brother called and I somehow asked him to come over when he asked if there was anything he could do.
He got here and I was balled up on the couch with my hands trying to squeeze inward on my brain, in total darkness. The only thing I was really thinking about was that this was the worst headache of my life and I was on the verge of asking him to take me to the hospital.
I thought that it could have been the flu (I did have a flu shot and figured it was probably another strain that hit me) or strep, but I never had any sneezing, coughing, sore throat or anything. Just fever, chills, aches, no appetite, that nasty headache, and fatigue. Probably dehydration too, going by how badly my lips peeled and my skin dried out.
I missed work that Monday and Tuesday, and finally had no fever on Wednesday (still had the headache) so I went back to work. But Wednesday night, something really strange happened. While I was getting ready for bed (I had my 6 months' bloodwork scheduled for 7 the next morning) I noticed that my chest was a little red and swollen. After a little more looking, I realized that I was covered from the neck down in a rash that looked like I'd cooked myself in a tanning bed. It was hot, itchy, and swollen. On my arms it looked like it had some kind of vascular pattern to it.
Well, the next morning I got up and it was looking worse, so at the lab I showed it to them and they said that I MUST see my doctor about that. They only saw my forearm... I wonder how badly they'd have freaked if they'd seen how bad it was on my shoulders. I wound up having to leave work that day at 9:30 because 9:45 was the only time my doctor could see me.
He had me undress and the further down he looked, the more dismayed he sounded when he said, "Oh my.. oh MY..." So he had the nurse give me a steroid shot and some pills to help with the itching. By the next day the rash was gone. This was on Thursday.
By Tuesday night of the next week, my left index finger was hurting, and I couldn't figure out why. I thought I'd been trying to pop my knuckle absentmindedly and broken it, going by the swelling in my hand under that finger. And my knees had started to hurt like someone had kicked me in the backs hard enough to strain them. My hips, neck, and shoulders were hurting. Moving sucked in general.
Wednesday morning (the last day of school) I was sure that my finger was horribly broken. (Or that I was a hypochondriac.) I couldn't move it without significant pain, and my wrist had frozen. I couldn't move my fingers and couldn't bend my wrist down. And my right wrist was starting to hurt - every time I moved my fingers, something down in my forearm snapped. By the middle of that day, my right wrist was starting to freeze up. The next morning I couldn't move that wrist or fingers
By the next morning when I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor, I could barely use my hands and I was beginning to get really upset with the situation. He looked me over and sent me back to the lab to have two bottles and several vials of blood. "Make sure they draw lots of extra blood in case something occurs to me later."
It was tested for mono, strep, and a ton of other things, and the only thing that was abnormal was my ever-present anemia. (And now I'm gonna have to take daily iron pills, because apparently my multivitamin with 100% iron isn't working?) He told me that he was having some blood sent off to be tested for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but he's sure that this is merely a viral infection that gave me some bizarre side effects.
I still think it might be that strain of mono-like virus that's been going through our school and can't be identified yet. Sam was able to tell me about my weird rash before I told him, and he said that his son's pediatrician had told him it was a virus that was a lot like mono, but wasn't quite the same thing. Makes you feel just as bad and takes some recovery time, but nothing can be done to ease it.
So now I'm attempting to rest enough and recover. But I have all that cooking to do before I go to my sister's house on Christmas Day, and she's demanding that I be there by 10 in the morning because she's "not gonna do all that cooking myself!!!" So... it looks like I'll be doing 75% of the cooking as it turns out, trying to recover from this fatigue.
And then they're springing the blind date baloney on me again. More about that tomorrow.
I guess my fatigue is dangerous.
The night of the 18th, I'd gone over to my nephew's girlfriend's house to take pictures of the kids before the big formal dance. Then I went to my Dad's house for a little while, because he was laid up with a broken leg.
By the time I left, my joints had started aching. My brother says that it was because I was sitting in the floor and I just got sore.
Well, by the time I had been home for an hour, chills hit me and I was shivering so much that my teeth were chattering. I couldn't pile enough blankets on the bed and I was miserable when the aches hit.
Then came the fever. For three days. My sister called me to see how I was, and I spoke before I thought... I said, "I could kill for some ginger ale..." She was on her way home after picking up medicines for her sick elder son, but she told me she didn't have any money to buy it with, she was tired after working for 9 hours and the drive. So I told her it was okay, I had diet soda and water in the fridge. I hadn't actually eaten anything since that Saturday, and by this time it was Tuesday. I still wasn't hungry, but to tell the truth, I couldn't stand up long enough to cook for myself, and I didn't have anything easily cookable. A couple of hours later she called me to say she was getting some Theraflu for her son and would generic ginger ale be okay?
(No comment on the "I don't have any money for a 79 cent bottle of ginger ale, but I'm going to head back out to buy Theraflu anyway.")
And then came the headache that not even my strongest medication would stop. (And ice didn't help either.) Instead of being a typical migraine that hurt horribly on one side of my head whenever I leaned over or stood up, this one seemed to be centered dead between the two hemispheres of my brain. No amount of ice could quite get that far into my head. It hurt for three days straight, and I spent about two days of it screaming in my bed because I couldn't even sleep and lying down hurt more than anything else. On day three my brother called and I somehow asked him to come over when he asked if there was anything he could do.
He got here and I was balled up on the couch with my hands trying to squeeze inward on my brain, in total darkness. The only thing I was really thinking about was that this was the worst headache of my life and I was on the verge of asking him to take me to the hospital.
I thought that it could have been the flu (I did have a flu shot and figured it was probably another strain that hit me) or strep, but I never had any sneezing, coughing, sore throat or anything. Just fever, chills, aches, no appetite, that nasty headache, and fatigue. Probably dehydration too, going by how badly my lips peeled and my skin dried out.
I missed work that Monday and Tuesday, and finally had no fever on Wednesday (still had the headache) so I went back to work. But Wednesday night, something really strange happened. While I was getting ready for bed (I had my 6 months' bloodwork scheduled for 7 the next morning) I noticed that my chest was a little red and swollen. After a little more looking, I realized that I was covered from the neck down in a rash that looked like I'd cooked myself in a tanning bed. It was hot, itchy, and swollen. On my arms it looked like it had some kind of vascular pattern to it.
Well, the next morning I got up and it was looking worse, so at the lab I showed it to them and they said that I MUST see my doctor about that. They only saw my forearm... I wonder how badly they'd have freaked if they'd seen how bad it was on my shoulders. I wound up having to leave work that day at 9:30 because 9:45 was the only time my doctor could see me.
He had me undress and the further down he looked, the more dismayed he sounded when he said, "Oh my.. oh MY..." So he had the nurse give me a steroid shot and some pills to help with the itching. By the next day the rash was gone. This was on Thursday.
By Tuesday night of the next week, my left index finger was hurting, and I couldn't figure out why. I thought I'd been trying to pop my knuckle absentmindedly and broken it, going by the swelling in my hand under that finger. And my knees had started to hurt like someone had kicked me in the backs hard enough to strain them. My hips, neck, and shoulders were hurting. Moving sucked in general.
Wednesday morning (the last day of school) I was sure that my finger was horribly broken. (Or that I was a hypochondriac.) I couldn't move it without significant pain, and my wrist had frozen. I couldn't move my fingers and couldn't bend my wrist down. And my right wrist was starting to hurt - every time I moved my fingers, something down in my forearm snapped. By the middle of that day, my right wrist was starting to freeze up. The next morning I couldn't move that wrist or fingers
By the next morning when I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor, I could barely use my hands and I was beginning to get really upset with the situation. He looked me over and sent me back to the lab to have two bottles and several vials of blood. "Make sure they draw lots of extra blood in case something occurs to me later."
It was tested for mono, strep, and a ton of other things, and the only thing that was abnormal was my ever-present anemia. (And now I'm gonna have to take daily iron pills, because apparently my multivitamin with 100% iron isn't working?) He told me that he was having some blood sent off to be tested for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but he's sure that this is merely a viral infection that gave me some bizarre side effects.
I still think it might be that strain of mono-like virus that's been going through our school and can't be identified yet. Sam was able to tell me about my weird rash before I told him, and he said that his son's pediatrician had told him it was a virus that was a lot like mono, but wasn't quite the same thing. Makes you feel just as bad and takes some recovery time, but nothing can be done to ease it.
So now I'm attempting to rest enough and recover. But I have all that cooking to do before I go to my sister's house on Christmas Day, and she's demanding that I be there by 10 in the morning because she's "not gonna do all that cooking myself!!!" So... it looks like I'll be doing 75% of the cooking as it turns out, trying to recover from this fatigue.
And then they're springing the blind date baloney on me again. More about that tomorrow.
posted by Me at 12:29 AM
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